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<p>[QUOTE=&quot;Ladybranch, post: 45776, member: 44&quot;]&gt;You know, there&#039;s a possibility that the physician (Dr. Walter M. Wright) was exposed to and contracted syphilis through a medical procedure he performed (surgery, childbirth????).&lt;</p><p><br /></p><p>You are so right, yourturn... According to write-ups on him, he did some surgery as well as being a public heath official. No doubt he came in contact with the disease all through his working days. Syphilis was considered a plague during the Victorian era. Speculation has been that 15%+ of the population in the US had syphilis. I have read of higher percentages across the pond. No doubt the percentage was higher everywhere because most causes were never reported due to fear of being stigmatized. Many folks were unaware of how contagious the disease could be from the sores. Many babies were born with congenital syphilis. It is argued that Columbus and his crew carried the disease back to Spain, Europe.</p><p><br /></p><p>Help for the disease didn&#039;t come about until early 1900. In 1906 the Wassermann reaction, a blood-serum test, was able to determine just who had syphilis. The drug arsphenamine/salvarsan, released in 1910, did help control the spread of syphilis. There was no good cure for the disease until the advent of penicillin in the 1920s. Before these drugs mercury, arsenic, and other poisons were used. It was not unusual to see a pic of city life during the Victorian era showing people with sores and disfigured faces from syphilis.</p><p><a href="https://www.google.com/search?q=Victorian+era+syphilis&amp;source=lnms&amp;tbm=isch&amp;sa=X&amp;ei=xD_7VLWjGrj_sASfpoCoAg&amp;ved=0CAcQ_AUoAQ&amp;biw=1024&amp;bih=589#tbm=isch&amp;q=Victorian+era+%22syphilis%22+sores&amp;imgdii=_" target="_blank" class="externalLink ProxyLink" data-proxy-href="https://www.google.com/search?q=Victorian+era+syphilis&amp;source=lnms&amp;tbm=isch&amp;sa=X&amp;ei=xD_7VLWjGrj_sASfpoCoAg&amp;ved=0CAcQ_AUoAQ&amp;biw=1024&amp;bih=589#tbm=isch&amp;q=Victorian+era+%22syphilis%22+sores&amp;imgdii=_" rel="nofollow">https://www.google.com/search?q=Victorian+era+syphilis&amp;source=lnms&amp;tbm=isch&amp;sa=X&amp;ei=xD_7VLWjGrj_sASfpoCoAg&amp;ved=0CAcQ_AUoAQ&amp;biw=1024&amp;bih=589#tbm=isch&amp;q=Victorian+era+&quot;syphilis&quot;+sores&amp;imgdii=_</a></p><p><br /></p><p>Locomotor Ataxia was a hard disease to identify. Many attributed the symptoms to rheumatoid arthritis, etc. LA was not given a name under 1868 and at that time I don&#039;t think it was associated with syphilis. One of the early medical papers diagnosing the early stages of LA was done in 1881:</p><p><a href="http://www.nejm.org/doi/full/10.1056/NEJM188102241040801" target="_blank" class="externalLink ProxyLink" data-proxy-href="http://www.nejm.org/doi/full/10.1056/NEJM188102241040801" rel="nofollow">http://www.nejm.org/doi/full/10.1056/NEJM188102241040801</a></p><p><br /></p><p>Walter&#039;s 2nd wife lived to the age of 94, which no doubt meant she never contracted the syphilis. Syphilis after a time may go into a dormant stage making it non-contagious. As she and Walter were married later in life, His disease probably was dormant. The best families in the land experienced it. Queen Vic&#039;s oldest grandson Prince Albert Victor, oldest son of the future King Edward VII, presumably had syphilis. He died at the age of 28. His brother George became King George V. Winston Churchill&#039;s father, Lord Randolph Churchill had syphilis also.</p><p><br /></p><p>--- Susan[/QUOTE]</p><p><br /></p>

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